1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a development device, an image forming apparatus and an image forming method that are designed to use liquid developer containing toner in carrier liquid.
2. Related Art
There are known wet type image forming apparatus that are designed to develop an electrostatic latent image formed on an image carrier by means of a liquid developer thin layer formed on a development device and transfer the visualized image onto a recording medium and have a development section that is provided with a developer carrier that supplies a liquid developer thin layer to an image carrier, a developer carrier cleaning section that removes the liquid developer left on the developer carrier after development and a liquid developer containing section that can contain the liquid developer coming from the development section.
The development section has a developer collecting section that collects the undeveloped liquid developer that is removed from the developer carrier and conveys it to the liquid developer containing section (Patent Document 1: JP-A-2001-125383).
However, the technique described in the Patent Document 1 can be accompanied by a problem that the collected liquid developer can stay for a prolonged period of time in the developer collecting section when the collected developer is conveyed to the liquid developer containing section to consequently reduce the effect of agitating and dispersing the developer left after development and the newly added developer. Additionally, the concentration of the liquid developer being conveyed to the liquid developer containing section can fluctuate to a large extent depending on the condition of the collected liquid developer to by turn fluctuate the concentration of the liquid developer in the liquid developer containing section to further reduce the effect of agitation and dispersion.